http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/73496561!.pdf

Ohio, New York, Nebraska and Washington have already opened prison nurseries. They observed that out of a dozen women who nursed children behind bars, none has returned to prison and that motherhood became a tool that keep women prisoners from committing more crimes.

The Correctional Nursery Program shall have the following purposes:

a) Establish an Infant Care Center or correctional facility; nursery at a medium security

b) Keep inmates from committing crimes while in custody through involvement in the various activities of the Program;

c) Provide drug counseling services to those identified as substance abusers and educate incarcerated mothers on parenting skills and family relations;

d) Evaluate, monitor and treat infants born to mothers with histories of substance abuse; and

e) Increase the likelihood that released participants of the Program shall

lead peaceful, productive and drug-free lives, thus, reduce recidivism.

Welfare

Okay so this is interesting... I waited like three weeks to make this post (okay, not waited... just failed to remember to do it in all the craziness that has become my life), but anyway.. It's crazy that I waited because I just had an interesting situation happen concerning welfare last weekend. My friend for some reason mentioned welfare in reference to some girls we grew up with and their abuse of the system. "People like her live off of our tax money", etc,etc,etc. To which I had to stick up for that girl that we should have graduated that has four or five kids. I'm not at all saying that she was wrong completely, but I had to make her aware that not all situations are the same. While I am fully aware that there are people abusing the system, which is crap anyway, there are a lot of women who have no other options. My friend made the point that these women need to get off the couch and get a job, they can't be living off of us. I had to argue that my friend doesn't know the situation that these women are in. It is hard for my friends and me that are goign to be graduating to get jobs, I can't imagine what it would be like for a woman trying to take care of her children, being a single parent, and being jobless but trying to get a job. On one hand we want our children to be upstanding and part of a bright future, however, with little guidance from their mother who is forced to work a minimum wage job and random hours of the day to "support" their children the chances that these children will learn the correct ways to act in society are pretty slim.
My feelings about this topic have not always been what they are now. Like my friend, who clearly has never taken a class that picks apart the welfare system, I had these same preconceived ideas about what welfare means. My social work class opened my eyes to a lot of things that I would have never known.  As a single mother, there is no good option to the crisis. Get a job that pays poorly, spend little time with your children, and use your paycheck to pay for babysitting or daycare OR stay home with your children and give them the care that you can provide them.  Either way you have NO MONEY and NO RESOURCES.
I didn't really understand what the book was trying to argue... It was a lot of information, I will say however that as a child I was ALWAYS told that money is no object when it comes to happiness. I feel like, from what I understand, these roles of care and money are reversed (???) in this chapter. Women are trapped and limited in their decisions to provide care OR money to their children. Care=Money??
One thing that I learned in my social work class is that EVERYONE benifits from welfare, which is also a point I had to make to my irate friend. So let's not be so quick to make judgements on those who "use welfare" because we will all be there someday. Just another little tidbit about welfare that I thought I'd throw in there...:)

Future aspirations

In ten years I will be almost 34 years old! :(  I hope to have a family and to have a stable career somewhere in the helping profession.  My ultimate goal is to spend some time in Africa helping to build an orphanage. In ten years, however, I hope to be back in the states and working possibly for a  government agency as a social worker.  The first step to making this dream come true is to get a degree from the University of Iowa.  After graduating in may, I plan to study and take the social work license exam to become a certified social worker.  I plan to find jobs in either des moines or omaha to stay close to home until I get some experience under my belt.  Other than Africa, I have a lot of ambition to move to Nashville.  All of this will happen within the next ten years:) I plan to start looking for jobs within the next couple of months and hopefully I get a big break somewhere and make some connections that will help me with meeting my goals!

  The professional world is all about hard work and connections;  starting at the bottom and working your way to the top which is what I plan to do.  Entry level jobs suck, but getting your foot in the door is necessary before becoming the CEO of a company.  I'm not saying my plans include being a CEO, but they could.  I plan to work my butt off to do whatever I need to do to become satisfied with myself, my career, and my life.. GWSS has and will continue to help me with my interactions with people.  I believe that your interactions with people either make or break you. The program has opened my mind to equality and acceptance which are huge in interacting with people on any level.  Also, with the places I aspire to go (Africa and Nashville) I will be dealing with a more diverse population.  This will require me to use the information provided in the past years of GWSS classes.  Sorry if I was being repetitive! 

Thing that I will need to be successful in achieving my goals:

* don't rely on anyone else to do the hard work 

*Take every opportunity as it arises, don't ever say or think " I wish I would have done that"

*Take advantage of being young- take chances (kinda like the one above but kinda different)

* Manage time, money, relationships, my mind:)

* Make good relationships and keep them

*Study, study, study,-- it doesn't end after school!  Always strive to make things better

 I'm sure there's a million more things so if I think of them, I'll post them.

Week 3-Justice

I haven't taken many women's studies classes, but the one or two that I have taken have completely opened my mind up to the injustices in the justice system.  Ironic huh?  But seriously, it is very skewed!
Justice... it seems like a simple thing to define.  It is a system used for people to get what they have coming to them, a form of being fair.  Justice should be equal rights for people,and it should be applied according to each individual in an individual way. Justice = fairness? Maybe this SHOULD be true, however, I have learned that justice does not necessarily equal anything.  It is dependent on way too many factors. Each person sees justice in a different way. The justice system was designed to provide fair and equal treatment, however, we all know that is not always true but is rarely fulfilled in this manner.
So to answer the last question, what is just?  Justice should be equal to being just.  As I mentioned before, the idea of being just is dependent upon a lot of different factors. Just should be based on truth, fairness, and true reasoning. Being just=truly being fair. 
Maybe all of my equations are wrong, but these are definitions of what SHOULD be! Going to the prison every week will probably open up more discussion on whether or not justice was served and whether or not the judges were being just in sentencing these women.  I am excited to hear the stories of these women, but am also unsure if I can deal with the fact that a system that we put so much trust in has failed many of these women.    

Week 2

Prisons are supposed to be used to keep criminals out of the general population.  I believe that with the first prisons, that was the goal. That being said, I believe that has been skewed.  Today, Anyone who crosses anyone is a criminal. Anyone who is "different" is a criminal.  How can we be "the land of the free" when a good portion of our population is living behind bars?  There are many, many cases of incarcerated people that should not be locked up, there are many people that the system has let down, there are many people that would benifit from other types of determent.  There are, however, cases in which people need to be punished or contained because they are a hazzard to society and it is for this reason that I believe that prisons were first established.

The reasoning behind going to ICIW, I hope, is to grasp a deeper understanding behind the issues leading up to the incarceration of these women. As was mentioned in class, it is easy to see ourselves in the stories of some of the women who are residing at the prison.  In society, it is easy to write these women off as being a danger to society or that their stories are so far-fetched that they must be evil or that there is something severely wrong with them. It is my hope that we will be able to put to rest those assumptions that we have coming in. I also believe that this is the purpose for going in and meeting these ladies and learning their stories;  an eye-opener. 

I think it is important that the women in the prison are able to talk to us, and to share their stories as they see them. I think a lot of times incarcerated people are put into groups according to the crimes that they have commited and never get the chance to talk about the specifics of each individual case.  They are commited of their crime according to the way the judge saw their case and it may or may not be understood in the same was as the women who experienced the situation.  We will benifit from these women in ways that we may not even know.  I am going into this experience with an open mind.  My mind has been opened in the last couple of years through learning things about the judicial system that I have never thought about before.  Before, I thought everyone in prison was dangerous and a bad person. 

I expect nothing more than to just soak up all of the stories and lives of these women.  I am excited to be able to get to know women that I never would have gotten a chance to meet in any other situation.  I am hoping to gain some understanding of the ideas behind prison life and the people who live those lives.  I am not scared about anything included in this experience. I am open minded and open hearted going into this experience.  I just hope that I do not bring into the prison any of my old thoughts and stereotypes about incarcerated people.

forgot to mention...

oh yeah, I forgot to mention how I will use the ethics of care in my life/career.  The ethics of care is kind of made into an occupation in the field of social work.  It is my ambition in life to care.  I'm going to start telling people that when they ask me what I want to do when I'm out of school:  "I want to care!"  Corny, I know, but I truly want that to be my goal in life.  If I don't make a lot of money, if I don't rule the world some day, and if I do nothing else in life to leave behind when I die,  I want to be satisfied knowing that I honestly cared for people.

Week one.. Ethic of care

What is an "ethic of care"?  This implies that we should see care as a moral obligation in society.  As a person, we each have an obligation to care about those who we come into contact with on a daily basis whether we know them or not, and to do so with a good conscience and intent.  Some people claim to care, however, they only "care" when it's convenient for them.  For example, sure I care about my friends, but do I care about them enough to get out of bed at five in the morning if they call me and they need me?  I do care, and I do go pick them up because their car is stalled because I have a moral obligation that goes along with caring about that person.  Do I care about the homeless man who doesn't have anything to eat?  Having an ethic of care, I believe, would point out my moral obligation to help that man if at all possible.  Care is defined as having concern for, to give serious attention, and providing protection for.  The ethic of care tells me that I have a moral obligation to give serious attention to or to provide protection for all people.